Reflections on your tolerance for risk by

What Risk is of Concern

2023-10-31 23:33:51 UTC

There is a combination of risks that are of concern, poor utilization of funding with no real measurable outcomes that truly help the community we endeavor to serve.

Governance Risk

2023-11-01 13:46:11 UTC

As a public charity that newly subgrants via funding from federal institutions, we are focused on decreasing compliance risks and ensuring we are following the guidelines of those federal grants.

Failure Can Be Good

2023-11-01 13:47:09 UTC

I've always been of the mindset that at least some failure is necessary because it provides an opportunity to learn and shows that you are trying new, innovative things.

My organization is most worried about impact risk. We have to report back to our main funding source biannually and our leadership is always afraid that we do not have enough impact to show. It's hard to steer the focus on outputs away to make room for focusing on long-term outcomes and systemic change.

2023-11-01 16:42:37 UTC

Impact Risk

2023-11-01 16:48:25 UTC

Our organization is most concerned about impact risk. Our board is made up of professionals who apply a business-perspective ROI to our grantmaking and seem to be most concerned about the cost-per-participant element and an organization/program's ability to scale up as much as possible.

Reframing Failure as "Learning Success"

2023-11-01 16:51:24 UTC

I personally love to look at everything I fail at as a "learning success." Our organization takes a similar approach, but we have less tolerance for putting ourselves in "risky" situations in the first place. We are new, so it is anticipated our tolerance for "failure" will increase as we come to solidify who we are and how we conduct our grantmaking.

Minimal Financial Vetting

2023-11-01 16:54:42 UTC

Our organization does not make "risky" grants in the sense that we fund well-established, well-known, long-standing organizations. While this has plenty of limitations and equity concerns, it does allow our small and newly composed staff to move a great deal of funds quickly. We fund organizations that have already been funded by other grant-makers who have incredibly robust financial vetting practices. We rely to some extent on their deeper assessment so that we feel comfortable looking at a limited financial picture ourselves.

Governance risk and impact risk

2023-11-01 17:23:57 UTC

Compliance risks is something we try to avoid because it affects the average flow at which we approve grants if the appropriate due diligence isn't done. I also feel that the mission is a focal point when funding grantees so there has to be an alignment in vision as well.

Learn from your mistakes.

2023-11-01 17:29:25 UTC

Working in philanthropy, I find that failure is knowledge and disruption is needed to impact change. I feel that if the failure does not have a negative impact on a grantee or a project, it should be taken as a learning experience.

Impact risk

2023-11-01 18:04:29 UTC

The overarching theme of our grantmaking has always been "How to make the world better", and I think there is always an underlying risk of something else being negatively impacted in that quest, so we try to mitigate those risks as best we can (making sure nothing else is getting worse as we try to make X better)

We are very forgiving of faliure, but prefer grantees to be transparent and to take time to reflect/learn

2023-11-01 18:15:07 UTC

I've noticed our POs are most frustrated when grantees are not upfront about missed goals/milestones and don't take timme to reflect/learn from failure.

reputational risk

2023-11-01 18:21:36 UTC

This is an area that is probably most difficult to wrap mind around. And certainly the grantees need to think of it as much as the grantor

Leadership > Finances

2023-11-01 19:12:23 UTC

While our organization does request financials during the application review process, it very rarely (if at all) impacts our decision whether or not to approve a grant. Instead, we are more deeply invested in the leadership's ability to move their organization's mission forward as it ties to our goals. More often than not, a change of leadership can steer that mission farther from our goals, which is not something we want to risk.

All of the Above

2023-11-14 19:06:43 UTC

All risk -- real or perceived -- is concerning.

Financial Review

2023-11-14 19:13:30 UTC

We are taking a revised approach to our financial review process formerly known as due diligence. With a more specific focus on publicly available data and financial trends over time we hope to continue to move the needle toward the principles of trust-based philanthropy.

Define Failure

2023-11-14 19:21:28 UTC

What does it mean (to your organization) to fail? Why? What are the mechanisms for transforming that failure into (insert your organizational objective here)?